A Foreign Interpretation Vol. 5

Added 27/06/2014 by Jurgen Heimlich

Finally, another column – I’ve been sitting on this one for quite some time, as I felt it somewhat hypocritical. Hypocryitical because I write this column, on an online wrestling website. Theres tonnes of them, every man and his dog who have access to the internet seem to be opening up wrestling based blogs/websites etc.

Why? I can’t answer that, the only reasons I can think of, are that it gives some people a sense of being ‘in with the boys’, ‘part of the business’ or ‘helping British wrestling’. In all honesty, very few of them are achieving any of those goals. ‘Market’ saturation dilutes the desired impact… Take note.

So why did I choose The Indy Corner? Well, I sure as hell didn’t need a platform to get over my thoughts, Twitter is great for gauging opinion. See who ‘favourites’ those tweets…

But the reason I agreed to do a column for this site is simply because there were previous columns by guys such as Nathan Cruz and Kris Travis. I doubt they’d put aside an hour or so to write for just anyone.
I may be wrong, but that’s my justification at least.

Anyway, this column is tackling something that’s been bugging me for a little while now

‘Show reviews’…

Now then, online British wrestling show ‘reviews’… Except not…

You see any ‘review’ I read on ANY British based website, blog etc, isn’t a review. Its merely a recollection of events. No critical words typed, no mention of the things that the ‘reviewer’ disliked. No opinion.

And why is this?

Well I’ll offer up one perspective, one that was given to me by a ‘review writer’ after I questioned a lot of his views.

Some people who write these pieces don’t want to ‘upset’ promoters or wrestlers by being critical, or offering a bad perspective. I asked why they cared about upsetting people, are we really so thin skinned in wrestling? So insecure?

The individual then said, that he had been sent private messages by the promoter asking him to take down said ‘review’.

I hope this was pure BS, because lets face it – None of us are perfect. Surely not one single wrestler, or promotion in this country doesn’t think that there isn’t room to improve. Hell, I’d welcome critical feedback far more than positive. Why? You don’t improve from being told that everything is great. Simple.

Surely everyone in wrestling wants to, or at least SHOULD want to continually get better, work on every aspect of their game. Whether we agree with someones feedback or not is irrelevant, but always listen. Its just one persons perspective.

On a related note, I worked two shows this past weekend, and as I looked out to the audience, I recognised a couple of trainees scribbling away and making notes into a notepad. At first glance I thought they were looking at things that they could take on board and use when they were working shows etc. What a truly fantastic attitude!

How wrong was I? They were actually making notes so that they could write a show ‘review’. All respect lost immediately.

If you’re training, a word of advice – Keep your head down, work hard be a sponge, take everything in. But don’t be writing pieces where you review shows. Especially when you’re training with these guys, or in this particular case, being trained by the guys you’re ‘reviewing’.

I’ll leave the column here for now, but I feel theres going to be more on this.

As always, feedback is very much welcomed, you can contact me on any of these formats: